


like an island

by orphan_account



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: A lot of feelings as usual, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drinking, I'm Sorry, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slice of Life, rated for mentions of drinking just to be sure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 04:15:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14072694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: the line between friends and lovers is supposed to be simple, and when they realise that it's not, freakouts ensue.





	like an island

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carrieonfighting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carrieonfighting/gifts).



> prompt fill for "stop running from this". I rewrote this a few times because I really wanted to do this prompt justice and each version got progressively angstier I'm so sorry
> 
> title from feelings by hayley kiyoko

On the TV, half-forgotten, a voice almost breaks. ‘ _Can you not feel it? The moments where the air shifts between us and it feels like we could be more than friends_?’   
  
‘ _I can_ ,’ another voice responds, and then the actors kiss on screen. It’s an old movie, the type to air on a Tuesday night on cable TV, and Ryan’s only half watching, but still sighs when he hears the dialogue— it’s way too close to his own situation for comfort. He switches it off and goes to bed.

When he wakes up in the morning, he sways and squints like he’s recovering from a night of hard drinking; he decides that if feeling too much can give you a hangover, he definitely has one.   
  
By the time he pulls up to work, he’s already had three coffees instead of his usual one, and a fourth cup is promptly thrust into his hand within two minutes of him sitting down; it comes with a ghostly feeling, not even a brush of a hand against his, but he feels a lot like it burns.  
  
It turns out to be a lot more literal than he previously thought when the hot liquid splatters on his t-shirt; the fact his left hand was still shaking when he tried to take a drink certainly didn’t help. He all but yelps before letting out a string of curse words under his breath.  
  
“Woah— you okay, dude?” Shane scrambles to roll his chair closer to him, grabbing a tissue to wipe the desk and stop any coffee from getting on their electronics.   
  
“I’m fine,” Ryan manages, “I only just burned my dignity alive, I think.”  
  
“I think your dignity will recover just fine,” Shane gives him one of his smiles that’s all in the eyes, and it’s still way too early for this—it’s too early for this whole situation, really, but especially this. “I’m not so sure about your shirt, though.”  
  
He glances down, and alright, his shirt is pretty much covered in coffee, dark liquid over white fabric. “This is just peachy,” he grumbles.  
  
Then he looks back up and Shane is taking off his red and black flannel to reveal a grey t-shirt underneath and handing it to him, and it takes him a second to process it. “Here. Just don’t get coffee on it; I kinda like that shirt.”   
  
Ryan scoffs. “Or what, you’ll punish me, Madej?” He gets up and starts walking in the direction of the bathroom to change. 

“I just might!” He hears Shane call after him. 

In the washed-out light of the office bathroom, he looks at himself in the mirror, stained t-shirt balled up in his hand and Shane’s flannel buttoned up, hanging loose on him. It’s very soft, he notices as he rolls up the sleeves. It also definitely smells like cologne, and he notices how it mixes with his own; he shakes his head before he can think about other instances where their scents could mix together.

  
_________________

 

Ryan thinks if he’s going to come into work tomorrow and feel like he’s got a hangover anyway, he might as well give himself a real one, and he swings by the liquor store on his way home to get a six-pack of beer. He sits on his couch and scrolls through Twitter absentmindedly for a couple minutes before he gives in and just slumps into the cushions, one hand holding a beer and the other rubbing at his temple. 

The thing he despises the most in this whole thing is how pathetic he thinks he’s being; he’s a grown dude who’s known he was into other dudes for a good decade or so, and he knows it’s the same for Shane, they both happen to be single, and  _yet_.   
  
There’s this fire between the two of them, and most of the time it’s just a controlled blaze he can warm his palms on when he gets cold, but some days it feels like a full-on inferno threatening to swallow him whole. It’s this weird thing where they know exactly where each other’s boundaries start and end, have a spare key to each other’s apartments, and he’s pretty sure he’s Shane’s emergency contact in LA in case something ever happened and someone had to get there quick, but they’ve never put any of it into words.   
  
He’s wondered before if he just feels closer to him because they share so many interests and because making not-straight friends as a not-straight person is a lot easier and more meaningful, but then he can think of so many other friends where, under the same circumstances, they don’t know each other’s orders at every fast food place under the sun.

  
_________________

  
  
When Ryan thinks about all the moments that feel like they’re on the edge of something more, he finds that most of them are acted rather than spoken. It’s not that they’re not affectionate with each other; they just have different boundaries, and it almost scares him how well he knows Shane’s, how he never has to walk on eggshells with him. He thinks of the time Shane got him a salt lamp for his bedroom last Christmas because apparently they can calm anxiety and help with bad dreams, and of the time Shane was having a bad day and they both took the day off for a day trip to the Joshua Tree desert park and he’d bought Shane a potted cactus he still has now.   
  
He remembers how they’d sat on the hood of his car in the desert that day and drank beer that had gone warm from being in his car, but neither of them cared, and Shane had slung an arm around his shoulder. On his couch on a Wednesday night, Ryan wonders if he could have kissed him and gotten away with it then.

   
________________

 

On a rare rainy evening, Ryan gets a text as he’s cooking pasta for dinner; it’s from Shane, and it just says,  _call me now and pretend it’s an emergency, I’m on a terrible date and I wanna bail SOS_. He’s amused more than worried when he presses the call button.  
  
It’s a surprise, though, when Shane shows up at his door completely soaked about twenty minutes later. “Dude knows where I live so I couldn’t just head back home since you used the ‘friend needs help with a flooded washing machine’,” he explains to Ryan’s bemused face.   
  
“Whatever,” Ryan rolls his eyes playfully as he turns on his heels to go back to the kitchen, “just dry yourself off, I’ve got pasta if you’re hungry.”   
  
They eat pasta on the couch and Shane gets up to leave a couple hours later, but Ryan forces him to borrow his sweatpants and take the couch because the rain outside is downright apocalyptic for California. He doesn’t mean for them both to doze off with a blanket pulled over them, but it happens anyway.

   
________________

  
  
Sometimes, when he’s not looking, Ryan will look over at Shane in conversation with people and see how his face lights up when people are interested in the stories he’s telling them. He’ll watch the understated laughter and calm but lively conversation. It occurs to him how much more he reacts when Shane is talking, how their conversations go from normal banter to the weirdest inside jokes.   
  
When Shane looks over in the middle of conversation and has that fondness that says, ‘ _come over_ ’ in his eyes, Ryan walks over like it doesn’t ache.

  
________________

  
  
Shane moves to a new apartment in the spring, and it comes with access to a roof terrace made of concrete and overrun with weeds on the sides and a couple old lawn chairs. They head up there on the first night and it’s just the two of them, staring at the starless sky with cheap beers in their hands.   
  
“This is really nice,” Shane says after a while of them sitting on an old blanket of his with their legs crossed and knees touching.   
  
“Yeah,” Ryan breathes,”it’s kind of peaceful.”   
  
Ryan feels the same way he did in the desert.   
  
He kisses him this time, with the sounds of traffic in the distance and Shane’s beer bottle hitting the floor haphazardly. Shane grabs his shirt with both hands, brings him closer, and he kisses him back long enough for Ryan to note that he tastes like Budweiser.   
  
“Ryan,” he says in the small space between their faces after he pulls back, “we can’t do this.”   
  
“Why? We’re single. You liked it.” Ryan doesn’t mean to sound choked up, but he does.   
  
Shane shuffles away from him and looks into the distance where every light in a window is a different life. “You know why.”   
  
"No, I clearly don’t, so feel free to enlighten me!” It comes out harsh. Maybe harsher than he means it to.  
  
“Because we’ll fall in love and it’ll ruin things, okay?”   
  
There’s a silence after that, heavier than any three-ton truck that might be driving by, and Ryan realises he’s not entirely wrong; they’ve never done anything in halftones. The couple times they’ve been mad at each other had been intense fighting, only for them to be constantly attached at the hip again a few days later, and he can sense it too, how they’d never stop falling if they don’t back away from the edge.   
  
“I should go,” is the only sentence he can think off that won’t make this worse. 

“Yeah, you probably should.” ‘ _because otherwise I’ll kiss you again and we’ll tear each other’s clothes off and there’s no undoing that_ ’ is left unsaid.   
  
Ryan steps over Shane’s spilled beer and licks his lips on the walk home. 

  
________________

  
  
There’s never a right moment to say “hey, remember how we acknowledged we’re minutes away from falling in love?” in the daylight, so they don’t. They laugh at the same jokes and sit together still, but Ryan notices something has shifted when Shane keeps making excuses not to spend time alone with him; movie night plans seem postponed until further notice.   
  
The first time he sees him in a non-work context in weeks is a party, and for the first time in years, he feels like they’re miles away. For all the moments they’ve avoided turning this into a vicious fight, Ryan sometimes wishes they hadn’t. He wishes they’d screamed in each other’s faces and traded insults instead of putting words on how fast they were approaching something more. 

  
________________

  
  
He realises, when he tries to move on by going on dates after work with various people, that something still feels unfinished, and it’s stopping him from moving on with literally anyone who isn’t a denim-jacket wearing gentle giant. It’s not the first time he’s had to get over someone he never actually dated, but this time it feels like they were already there for a couple years at least.   
  
It feels like they were waves, hitting the beach and licking the sand repeatedly in a perfect rhythm. 

One piece of advice you hear a lot regarding the sea is that if it disappears, you shouldn’t go looking for it. Ryan chooses to go seek the saltwater on purpose, hoping he’ll be lucky enough to be caught in the oncoming tsunami. 

  
________________

  
  
“No,” Shane tells him right before Ryan leans in to kiss him in his living room,” it’s late and you’re drunk.”   
  
He realises looking up at him through heavy-lidded eyes that Shane is rarely wrong. “Maybe a little,” he admits. “I needed the confidence.”  
  
“Just go.”   
  
Ryan walks home, because he can now, because Shane’s new apartment is just that close, for the second time in a few weeks.

  
________________

  
  
He’s jolted awake by a knock on his door about twelve hours later, and the Saturday morning light washes over him when he pads over to answer.   
  
Shane stands there looking out of sorts, and it hits Ryan that he could have used the key he has to his place but didn’t, and he wonders if it’s to save face in trying to keep a distance for a moment before he lets him in.   
  
“Did you mean it?” Shane asks when they’re seated on his couch, further apart than they’ve been for what feels like centuries. “Yesterday night, did you mean all that?”  
  
Ryan doesn’t flinch, but the mention of his unearned confidence born out of sheer want not even half a day earlier makes something swim in his stomach. He recalls showing up at his door and telling Shane,  _I can’t pretend to stay away from this anymore_ , and then Shane had ushered him out.   
  
“I did,” he responds while he looks at his carpet, “I meant all of it. Is that why you asked me to go?”  
  
“No, I wanted to make sure we didn’t do something we’d both regret last night.” Shane nervously plays with the bottom of his shirt. “I just feel like it’s so intense, this thing we have, and—and one fuckup could mean we’re over, and I guess I don’t really know what I’d do without you anymore.”   
  
“Me neither,” Ryan sighs loudly, and he thinks that’s when he finally grasps that he’s never had that before with someone he wasn’t dating. “why do you think I showed up to your door like some asshole in a rom-com?”   
  
Shane looks up then, and there’s the most imperceptible smile on his face, but Ryan sees it in his eyes when he can finally bear to hold his gaze. “Good point, well made.”   
  
“Let’s stop running from this,” When the words leave Ryan’s mouth, they’re as close as they were that night on the roof, and he’s cautious, almost like if he makes the first move the moment will fracture.  
  
“Yeah, let’s,” is the last thing Shane says before he kisses him and finally finishes what he started a couple weeks ago. It’s deep and sloppy and needy, but he doesn’t care anymore; he focuses on pulling Ryan into his lap instead.   
  
Later, the inevitable tsunami Ryan was waiting for happens in the form of sheets thrown around and waves of desire stronger than anything he’s felt before.

**Author's Note:**

> was this any good? let me know, and/or come yell at me on [tumblr](http://summonedwheezes.tumblr.com/)!


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